The Giver By Lois Lowry

Jonas discovers what is really beyond his community, beyond all the rules and policies they have to follow; he decides to leave and give all of his memories to the rest of the community so they would know about what they have not seen or experienced before. Jonas discovers that the community has decided too many things for everyone. He realizes Sameness is not right, that it cannot last any longer. He thinks of all the what-ifs. What if the Elders choose a wrong spouse? What if the Elders choose the wrong job for someone?

The Giver by Lois Lowry is about a twelve year old boy, Jonas, living in a utopian society. This story follows Jonas on his way to find out the truth about his Community, and what secrets lie in the past. The society where Jonas lives knows nothing of the real world, and only know of their perfect reality. In the novel The Giver, the most significant theme is control because in the society there is no freedom of knowledge, freedom of love, or freedom to do what they please, which amounts to uttermost control.

Everyone is burden with pain. No one can escape emotional, physical or mental misery because it is part of what makes us human. Without pain we would live in a world of sameness. Although there is no way we can escape this reality, what if there existed a utopian society in which everyone could live peacefully without the burden of pain? Would everyone be better off or would living in ignorance be a burden for someone else? Lois Lowry gives us a glimpse into what life would be like in a world where conflict does not exist and shows us what this type of world would do to our humanity. In The Giver, she introduces us to Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy who starts off as an oblivious member of his

The Giver, by Lois Lowry is about a young boy named Jonas who is growing up in a utopian society. In The Giver they have no memories of anything that has pain even involved which meant that the community had to get rid of some joyful things also. Jonas, the receiver, and The Giver himself are the only two that know the memories. The author, Lois Lowry, was given the Newbery medal in 1994. In her acceptance speech of the medal she stated things in her life that influenced her book, The Giver. Many of the events in Lois Lowry’s life had really influenced many of the big events in The Giver.

In this novel, foreshadowing is a crucial literary element that Lois Lowry uses to give the reader hints about what is going to happen later on in the book. Foreshadowing gives the reader an idea of the main character's personality, introduces the conflicts that are yet to happen, and discreetly proposes the main theme: the importance of being an individual. Lois Lowry even chose to begin her book with foreshadowing by saying, "It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to feel frightened." (Lowry 6). For example, at the beginning of the book, Lowry introduces the one thing that makes Jonas physically different than the rest of the population in the community: his eyes. Jonas has pale looking eyes, just like the Giver. This is a way of telling the reader that he is special, and will have significant role in changing the community. Another example of this element in the book is the “seeing beyond” that Jonas starts to experience. This example foreshadows the internal changes that are going occur to Jonas later on in the story. “The apple had changed. Just for an instant. It had changed…” (Lowry, 51). Through these examples, foreshadowing easily gives the reader a better understanding of how important it is to have a unique personality.

Elvis Presley once said, “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain 't goin ' away.” Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave relates to this quote by focusing on the truths of reality that humans do not comprehend. We think that we understand what we are seeing in our world, but we really just perceive shadows of the true forms of the things that make up the world. We are ignorant about the true nature of reality. The novel, The Giver, by Lois Lowry also involves these concepts. The main character, Jonas, lives in a community of conformity and conflict. When he begins to spend time and train with The Giver, an old man who is the only keeper of the community 's memories, Jonas discovers the unsafe truths of his community 's secret past. Once Jonas discovers the reality about his community, it constantly pesters him until he makes an important decision. Jonas realizes that he must escape from his world in order to make a long needed change for his community. As the prisoner from The Allegory of the Cave seeks knowledge outside of the cave, Jonas from The Giver discovers dark and deadly truths of his community’s secret past that will change his life forever.

Through our society we are all raised up to be independent and unique individuals such as being ourselves and expressing who each of us are to the world. However, in the book The Giver by Lois Lowry, everyone is raised to count on one another and everyone must look and act the same. Our society differs from Jonas’s in many ways, such as the family units, birthdays, and the way we each learn about our past.

In the novel, The Giver, by Lois Lowry, the topic of life occurs throughout the story. Jonas lives in a community based on conformity and sameness. Jonas is chosen as the receiver of memory. As he is trained he learns that change is needed in the community. At the end of the book, Jonas tries to go elsewhere to return the memories back to the community. In The Giver, the author uses the characters, plot, and conflict to develop the theme that life can not be taken for granted.

Lois Lowry’s novel, The Giver, offers a thought provoking, well written story, because it changes the perspective of anyone who dares to read it to. Lowry places her novel, at some point in the future when mankind has gone away with changes and choices in life. She forces readers appreciate, or at least re-think the world they live in today. Her novel presents a fully human created environment where people have successfully blocked out conflict, grief, and individuality. Each person follows the same routine every day. Failure comply with standards, to be different, means death. Jonas, the main character, finds himself trapped in this world.

The isolated community filled with the same individuals behaving the same way makes it a perfect setting for Lowry to represent the power of difference and how it can ultimately go against a whole community of monotony. He uses rhetorical questions to question the reader into how someone could not fit into a community in which everyone is the same. “How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.” He then quickly contradicts this statement by stating “If you don’t fit in, you can apply for elsewhere and be released” and also by introducing the character of Jonas who is presented to the audience as an individual who is different from the others.

In the book The Giver by Lois Lowry, Jonas is a twelve year old boy waiting for his assignment in this utopia community where there is no pride, sorrow, color, feelings, love or pain. When it is the Ceremony of the Twelves Jonas is selected as the new Receiver in Memory which is a big deal. During his training, Jonas makes a bond of The Giver which is the Current Receiver. After a year of training, Jonas and The Giver make a plan for Jonas to escape so the memories will return to the community. So Jonas runs away to Elsewhere with Gabriel, a sick baby his family unit needs to take care of and eventually makes it to the outside world.

Would you like to live in a society where anger, greed, hate and pain are eliminated? A society where differences are nonexistent and the feelings of envy and jealousy are extinct? It sounds wonderful, but what does this society cost its citizens? Lois Lowry wrote The Giver, and when it adapted into the film, it is directed by Phillip Noyce. The film takes place in a society that has eliminated the differences within people. They have little emotion, cannot see colors, and have no memory of all the past events like war, pain, animals, and emotions. They are all assigned jobs at a young age and Jonas is assigned as the receiver of memory. He keeps all the memories of the past to provide wisdom for the future. Once the current receiver of memory (the giver) gives him all of these memories and emotions he realizes that keeping all of these things from the community is wrong. He sees his father releasing (killing) babies and his father did not realize he was killing them. Jonas’ family was caring for a child that was not mature enough to be in the nurturing center and is eventually scheduled to be released. Jonas took the baby out of the community, crossed the boundary and restores all the emotions and memories to the entire population. Is a perfect, predictable, systematic society worth sacrificing personal choice and emotional individuality? No, emotions and personal choices give our lives purpose, drives us to become more; these things make us human.

As we walk through life, we take for granted the gifts that make it such a blessing: its beauty and complexities, the small things that we do not even think of on a moment to moment basis; the flowers, the different colors of green in the trees, the yellow and black of the bumble bee. We take for granted the people that we share our lives with, missing out on the beauty of their mere presence at that moment. Within mainstream society we tend to get in such a hurry or so caught up in the day’s activities that we miss out on the unseen beauty in life, fail to feel deep emotions and the joy of sacrificing for the love and happiness of another; missing out on the opportunities to make life more beautiful and worth living. Lois Lowry’s The Giver both the novel and the film are a great illustration of what appears to be a utopian life but in reality it is a dystopia, which Jonas and the Giver set free by opening the minds of society to the true beauty of life, deep emotions, and self-sacrifice.

As I was reading the first few pages, I found that this book particularly reminds me of The Giver by Lois Lowry. Both books take place in a future american society, which many customs we value today, such as freedom of choice, have been eradicated. The timeline of the two stories are based upon that of a Dystopian society which appear as Utopia to the inhabitants who know of nothing outside of their institutionalized community. Seemingly harmless commodities such as books, music, etc. are ironically forbidden to prevent disorder from erupting in their restrictive, law-abiding society. Events that occurred anteriorly to the forming of the society are not to be discussed nor known about.

The Marxist criticism is based on the socialist theories of Karl Marx and how the readers must closely examine the dynamics of class as they attempt to understand the works they read. In a world where there is no pain, no prejudice, no emotion, and no detestation. Lois Lowry gives a vivid description of a community where everything is equal, everyone is just as important as another, and life choices are made by only one individual. In the book The giver by Lois Lowry, it expresses the exact opposite of Marx’s most important ideas which is a prime example of what people will do if they were forced to live a certain way.